Evaluation

EVALUATION

ABI BETTS

DEVELOPING AND CHALLENGING CONVENTIONS

•My magazine front cover is conventional and follows in the way that I have used simple fonts that can be found on other magazines as my masthead was plain and very bold, yet simple, I used this to make the magazine look sleek but bold. This was inspired by ‘Billboard magazine which uses a simple yet noticeable mast head. However I have chosen for a more minimalist approach compared to some of the magazines in the same genre, I chose to have only a few headings and articles displayed on the front page as I wanted the reader to only get a snippet of what might be in the magazine and want to buy it because of that.

•I decided to use different shapes around my headings and features to make it look different and interesting instead of using using block colours as I did not want it to look too bold.

DEVELOPING AND CHALLENGING CONVENTIONS

•My contents was inspired by the layout of 'Q' magazines as I thought it was very simple yet it still looked interesting and different.

•Like with my front cover I wanted my contents page to be very minimalistic and simple, so I used the same font as my mast head which was clean and bold, and left the top half of the page very plain.

•Instead of having all the features etc in a long list on the page I decided to use pictures that would be included in the rest of the magazine so that if the reader is interested in the picture they can easily find it along with the article.

•I wanted some sections that would be regular within the magazine, so I made a section that I could list the features in down the side.

REPRESENTATION

•My magazine represents a range of ages but mainly teens to young adults, as the artists mentioned on the cover such as Bastille are a relatively new, young band that have a large fan base made up of young people. They also represent the type of music fans that appreciate different and alternative music.

•The magazine is aimed at all genders and the use of blue, black and white colours I used are gender neutral. Although the magazine cover may appeal towards females as the cover artist is a young girl but the artists used will attract all genders.

•The cover artist represents young adults that are interested in alternative/indie music she is casually dressed holding a guitar, this reflects the music genre of the magazine which is generally played with a guitar. I dressed her in quite a girly yet simple and different dress so she would appeal to the female audience but not scare away the male or less feminine readers of the magazine.

REPRESENTATION•With my double page spread the picture I used was a simple shot of a young adult looking in to the distance, I feel as though this picture is represents the genre of indie/alternative music as its quite a mysterious picture as the person has his hood up and it looks different as I imagine the readers of my magazine may be.

•I used a deep purple for some of the text and border as I felt like the colours complimented the picture and it was a colour I hadn't seen used in many other magazines.

INSTITUTIONS

•ICP media publishing house may distribute my magazine as it has similarities to the genre of music in 'NME' magazine, although instead of the magazine being indie rock like NME, my magazine is more indie alternative which will appeal to a slightly different audience.

•I would have my magazine be released monthly rather than weekly like NME as this means that the reader would not have to be paying for the magazine every week as I know that my audience is young people who may not be able to pay the price every week. It also means suspense will be built for the readers as they are waiting to see what new content it will include.

•My magazine will be available through social media websites such as Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram. This will allow the readers to keep up with the magazine and have a taste of what kind of content will be in the next issues.

•Infinity will have its own website which will have information which doesn't make it in to the magazine such as a page where the readers can talk about what music and content they will like to see in upcoming issues. As well as information on new bands and music that we are recommending that the viewers listen to and may like.

TARGET AUDIENCE

•The target audience of my magazine is older teenagers to young adults, both male and female as the genre of indie alternative music is mostly listened to buy the age group of 16-24 year olds. Not only that but I think that the is the age group that are the most likely to actually buy a magazine as the younger generation care more about keeping up with their favourite music and artists.

•Although my magazine is gender neutral, I feel as though it will probably attract a more female audience than males, due to the nature of 'fan girls' who will go out of their way to see anything that their favourite band/artist is in.

ATTRACTING AN AUDIENCE

•To attract an audience, I have used 'Bastille' an indie alternative band that is very popular within the music industry at the moment on my front cover. I have also used a young and attractive female model who would appeal to males and female readers.

•The promise of 'Free signed posters inside' will hopefully attract an audience as usually the type of people who buy music magazines are likely to have posters and picture up in their room, so this should entice them.

•The headings on the front of the magazine give enough information to get the reader interested but are vague enough to make the reader want to buy the magazine to see the whole thing. For example 'Frank turner talks new album, his journey to fame and getting 100 death threats a day', the reader will see thing and wonder why he got 100 death threats a day.

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TECHNOLOGIES•Before starting my magazine, I was taught about the different camera shots used in media and magazines, and I found that the best one for a magazine was either a mid shot, or a close up. I decided to go with a mid shot, that way I could fit in a guitar that my model was holding.

•Throughout the process of creating my magazine, I had to use software that I had never used before such as Photoshop. The process using Photoshop was very alien to me and at first I had great difficulty doing the simplest of things on it for example I struggled at first even changing the brightness and colours of my picture, but eventually I got there. I managed to complete the whole of the front page on Photoshop, this included me being able to change the image in many ways, I changed my models hair length, parting, colouring and bits of her clothing to give her more of a cover girl look. •Before vs After •For my double page

spread and contents page, I used Publisher as I was already comfortable with using, and I also knew that I was going to have much more text on them and that publisher had a wider range of fonts to choose from.

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SKILL IMPROVEMENT

Looking back on my preliminary task, I feel as though I have made a lot of improvements since then.I made my school magazine front cover on publisher, the picture I used was very bad quality, with a bad filter on it. The font I used for my masthead was very basic and did not really stand out on the page, I learned from this and made sure that my actual magazine had a very bold font for the mast head.The only colour on my magazine was the pink from the shirt with the rest of the fonts black, this did not make any of the headings on the page stand out and would not appeal to an audience of any kind. From a distance, you can barely even read the headings on my preliminary front cover, I made sure that the colours and fonts on my new magazine cover were stood out off the pages, I used different methods to do this, such as colouring behind the headings in different shapes.When I was creating my newest magazine, I had studied the layout of other magazines to get an idea of what works best and how I could make it look as professional as possible. I found that I did not need to do my front cover on publisher and that Photoshop worked much better for getting pictures on.